My interest in Rime goes back several decades to the late 70s when I began studying Tibetan Buddhism. At that time, Tibetan teachers in the west were few and far between. A fledgling dharma student such as myself would take teachings from whoever came through, whether it be a Geluk, Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, or even Bon teacher. I didn’t know that much about the differences between sects, and didn’t see any conflict between the various teachings I had taken. Many years later, someone asked me what lineage I “was” and I was stumped for an answer. When I explained that I took teachings whenever and wherever I could, from whomever, the questioner said, “Oh, then you are Rime.”

Looking back, a primary area of wounding and healing I have had to resolve was in my relationship to Christianity.

I was born to parents who were Christians in the same way their parents were, namely, identifying themselves as Roman Catholics and going to church on Sunday.  As a child, I annoyed my parents with questions about the church, God, Mary, Jesus, and the old priest who snuck outside during mass and smoked cigarettes.

Hinduism began shaping my spiritual heart when I was in my teens, in the streets of Seattle. A group of Hare Krishna’s chanted and pogoed regularly in Pike Place Market, one of my first and favorite haunts as an independent teenager. I loved the drums, the tennis shoes, and haircuts. More than that though was a feeling of butterflies hatching from a place I was just remembering.

I have enjoyed a long love affair with sacred texts. My definition of sacred text or scripture is when revelations and understandings of the Divine are made available to one during the study of a traditional or nontraditional spiritual text. I started seriously reading sacred texts at the age of 14 and have continued to this day-mostly Buddhist texts and have studied Chinese and Tibetan to understand them more fully.

One day, when I was about 13, my mother brought me home an odd-shaped little silver symbol. As she lay it in my hands, she said “I really don’t know why I am giving this to you other than I saw a man wearing one of these around his neck and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I asked him what it was and he said it was the Jewish symbol for life, called a ‘chai. I knew I had to find one for you, so I looked and looked till I found one, and here it is.”

How Forest the Fish Helped Me Realize the Unnamed God. One day last week I drove up to our local post office. In front of me on a telephone pole was a hand-scrawled sign “My goldfish Forrest needs a new home.” I took down the phone number, hoping the little guy was still available to come and live with the other 150 or so fish in my backyard pool/converted fishpond.

I prepared for my morning meditation with setting the intention for clarity on the next direction for my life’s journey. I had been on the fence about whether to go into chaplaincy, through the Chaplaincy Institute for Interfaith Arts and Ministry, or going back to school for a psychology degree. I called in all my protectors and guardian angels, all my ancestors. I lit my candle, smudged the puja table with incense, and lowered myself to the zafu.

Gratitude is a slippery fish; one minute you have it, the next you don’t. Gratitude is a circular river: It may appear to start and stop, but does it? Gratitude is a gateway drug.

As a very young child I was intrigued with going to church: the stained glass windows; the smiling nuns and different language; the beatific statue of Mary; and the scary statue of Jesus.

One Christmas Eve, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the Star of Bethlehem, just as it is in the pictures, and felt peaceful with my born tradition

I arrived to interfaith studies grounded in over three decades as a student and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. I had deep and proven trust that my spiritual practice was, for me, a perfect fit. I felt whole, complete, and happy, and could look back on my life and see the transformation resulting from this dedication not just in myself but also in how the outer mandala of my life had constellated. The practice was doing me and I was greatly satisfied.

I was days before my 14th birthday when Jethro Tull’s album Aqualung came out in 1971. Hearing the songs for the first time gave me full permission to raise my voice and question what I had been force fed about organized religion. The songs spoke to the religious ideals of high culture, which I felt as distrust.